Cycling: A nation's devotion rides on

Norman Fox studies the issues as D-Day beckons for troubled Tour

ON WEDNESDAY of this week final entries and the eligibility of competitors will be decided by the organisers for next month's Tour de France. What is normally a formality has become one of the greatest dilemmas in sport. Will the Tour organisers carry out their threat and finally tell the increasing number of riders who have failed dope tests or even been under suspicion at any time in their careers that they are not wanted?

Even in France, where the Tour is held in almost religious regard and protected as a national institution, there is growing pressure, at least from the uncommitted media, to clean up the sport. There have even been calls for riders to be divided between those who are prepared to declare that they use drugs and those who swear they are "clean" and agree to dope tests anywhere and at any time. However, suggestions that this year's Tour could be called off while it gets to grips with the problem or that all riders under suspicion be banned are unrealistic, partly because it would be impossible to find a sufficient number of replacement riders who have never been cast under the shadow of doubt for taking illegal substances but mainly for the obvious reason that the French public retain a devotion that supersedes all moral doubt.

On Friday the Tour organiser, Jean-Marie Leblanc, ruled out any prospect of postponement because most French people wanted the race to go ahead. "Why should the Tour alone suffer while other events can [take place]?" he said. "Wherever I go people come up and say, 'Hold tight, M Leblanc, the Tour must go on'." He made an appeal to police and customs not to interfere while the race was in progress. "The cyclist's routine is a very special one with the racing, the massages and the sleep," he said, "and if they are taken away to hospital or police stations it perverts the course of the race."

In spite of relentless drugs scandals, last year's Tour was watched by record crowds. The influential sports paper L'Equipe depends on and encourages that blind dedication but the credibility of cycling is so low internationally that dramatic action is probably not far off.

The sport's standing will not have been enhanced by claims in a German news magazine which accuse the team of 1997 Tour de France winner, Jan Ullrich, of systematically using blood doping and other performance-enhancing drugs. Ullrich himself had an unusually high red blood cells count shortly after his Tour victory, Der Spiegel alleged yesterday, a claim denied by a team spokesman.

Der Spiegel said its article, to be published tomorrow, was based on training documents and statements made by unnamed former Team Deutsche Telekom aides.

"According to former members of the team, doping is used by Team Telekom precisely as systematically and comprehensively as it is by competing teams - except that no one has been caught yet," it wrote, adding that Telekom riders used EPO, steroids and growth hormones, provided by the various support staff on the team.

The paper claimed that at a one-day race shortly after he won the 1997 Tour de France, Ullrich had a red blood cell count "way over" 50, the allowed limit. It said Ullrich did not stay in the team hotel to escape possible drug tests.

Jurgen Kindervater, spokesman for Deutsche Telekom AG, the team's sponsor, denied the allegations. "I don't see a single proof," he said.

"The whole article is a conglomeration of allegations. They are insinuations and conjectures." He said he had "proof" that Der Spiegel had been engaged in "chequebook journalism", trying to "bribe" former team staffers.

Kindervater said the team underwent 180 drug tests a year, 80 of them conducted by the International Cycling Union, UCI, and the rest by the team itself. The team's doctor, Lothar Heinrich, also denied the allegations. "I can rule out that any of our riders have taken drugs," he said.

The publication's claims are merely the latest to tarnish cycling. In France in the last few days, an editorial in Liberation demanded a one- year moratorium on all cycle racing, and the book Chain Massacre, by cycling coach Willy Voet, became a non-fiction best-seller. Voet claims that today's riders not only take drugs to enhance their performance and help them recover in order to fulfil the absurdly demanding commitments agreed by their teams in conjunction with sponsors and television, but also for pleasure.

The issue has resurfaced as a result of Marco Pantani, who won the shambles of last year's drugs discredited Tour, being declared "unfit" to finish the recent Tour of Italy. The future of the Tour de France has been further undermined by a threat from the top French rider Laurent Jalabert, who now lives and is licensed in Switzerland, that he may refuse to compete. Jalabert claims he is being persecuted by the French authorities; more intrigue to endanger what should be one of the world's greatest and most demanding tests of unsullied physical and mental stamina.